More than a decade ago, I started writing a column on everyday consumer frustrations called The Red Tape Chronicles — my mailbag overflowed with rage. Piled high in my inbox every day were missives about mysterious late fees, overcharges, surprise interest rate hikes, and really all manner of sleazy, sneaky [Keep reading]
America’s housing market is crazy, which makes most Americans crazy. Fixing it would require something like 4 million new homes to drop out of the sky tomorrow. Or perhaps 7 million. And even that wouldn’t really restore the U.S. social contract with the middle class. If you really want to [Keep reading]
Is the long national inflation nightmare over? Well, that’s a $64 trillion question. Today brought news that the Consumer Price Index rate of increase was flat last month — the first pause in that measure of rising prices since 2020. Wall Street reacted to the news with predictable restraint and [Keep reading]
Americans are mad. They feel like they’re getting ripped off all the time — I’ve made a career chronicling this — but I don’t think they are quite sure who to be mad at. There’s a long list of culprits, but here’s one that’s often overlooked. Even people with good [Keep reading]
Two-thirds of all jobs in the country are low-paying at less than $20 an hour or $40,000 a year About 43% of households, or about 51 million, don’t earn enough to cover the basics. Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, or ALICE, is a worrisome group for America What’s the minimum amount of money you [Keep reading]
It’s an age-old question: Is life harder or easier for today’s young people? Well, score a “win” for the millennials. Younger adults are spending a stunning amount of money on rent — $93,000 by age 30, according to a new study. More important, rent sucks up about 45% of their [Keep reading]
If you think fake news is bad, wait until fake news video becomes a thing. Or until an entire generation of kids hacked by Silicon Valley’s attention-mining tools comes of age. Or until Facebook throws up its hands and realizes it simply can’t stop the Frankenstein it has created. We’re [Keep reading]
One of the themes of my Restless Project is that American consumers today are subject to major forces they can neither see, nor understand, nor plan for, and that’s a great source of day-to-day anxiety. Examples are all around us. Here’s one: Pew recently found that 46 percent of Americans [Keep reading]
Is renting (a home) the new buying? Single-family rentals—either detached homes or townhomes—are developing faster than any other portion of the housing market. These rentals outpace both single-family home purchases and apartment-style living, according to the Urban Institute. “Almost all the housing demand in recent years has been filled by [Keep reading]
It’s no secret that young people are getting married and starting families later in life than their parents did. It is, however, a bit of a secret where they are choosing to settle down. Big cities and their big employers have always attracted young workers, and that’s still true. But [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan